C Box - Blood Trail

Behind the soldiers are two men wearing cowboy hats with red shirts and patches on their shoulders. Game wardens. One is lean and wary and the other big and already out of breath. Behind the game wardens are members of the sheriff’s office.

They stop about fifteen yards from where the body is hanging. I can tell by their physical reactions to the body how the sight affects each of them. The soldiers/hunters gesture to confirm what they’ve described, where they were standing when they found the corpse. One of the deputies turns away and looks up at the tops of the trees, gazing at anything other than what is in front of him. The other stares morbidly at the body, as does the sheriff, who looks perplexed. The big game warden has lost all his color and seems frozen and ineffectual, as if the life has gone out of him, his face frozen into a white mask. The lean game warden steps aside into the trees and bends over with his hands on his knees, is violently sick. The sheriff points at him and nudges his deputy, and the two of them exchange glances and smirk.

I watch the game warden who threw up. When he’s done, he rises and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. He’s angry, but not at the sheriff for making fun of him. By the way he glares in my direction and at the forest and meadows he can see, I think he’s angry with me. For the briefest moment, I can see his eyes lock with mine although he doesn’t register the fact because he’s not sure I’m here. The crosshairs of the scope linger on his red shirt over his heart. I could squeeze the trigger and make the shot-it’s a long way but there is no wind and my angle is decent-but I won’t because it would give my position away. There’s something about the set of his jaw and his squint that tells me he is taking this personally .

Of all of them, I decide he’s the one to worry about.

WHEN HE FINALLY rejoins the others, I rise to my knees and use the trunk of a tree to get to my feet. My legs are tired from walking most of the night and they shake from the dissipating adrenaline that still burns through my thigh and calf muscles. I feel for a moment like sleeping, but I know I can’t.

I move slowly in the shadows of the timber. A quick movement could startle a lurking animal or a nesting bird and give me away. Although it is cold, I stay away from anywhere the sun is filtering through the trees to avoid a sun-caught glint from my rifle barrel or scope. I cap my scope and sling my rifle over my shoulder. The spent cartridge is still in the chamber because I’ve learned not to eject it after firing and risk the possibility of it being found. I look around on the bed of pine needles where I lay to make sure I haven’t dropped anything. Then I nose my boot through the shape that’s still defined in the needles, erasing the impression of my body .

I pick up the daypack, which now sags with weight.

My bare hands, my clothes, even my face are sticky with blood. My concern isn’t the blood that is on me. The clothes will be burned and the blood will be washed off my skin and scraped out from beneath my fingernails. What worries me, always, is leaving a track, leaving a trace of myself .

I know Edmond Locard’s Principle, the central theory of modern forensic crime-scene investigation: something is always left behind.

And this time, like the other times, I have left something for them intentionally. What I don’t want to leave is something unintentional, something that can lead them to me.

Before I leave the area for my long hike back, I use my binoculars to take a last look at the investigators. As I do, I see the lean game warden studying the ground beneath the hanging body and squatting to retrieve what I placed in the grass.

AS A HUNTER I am looked down upon in Western society. I am portrayed as a brute. I am denigrated and spat upon, and thought of as a slow-witted anachronism, the dregs of a discredited culture. This happened quickly when one looks at human history. The skills I possess-the ability to track, hunt, kill, and dress out my prey so it can be served at a table to feed others-were prized for tens of thousands of years. Hunters fed those in the tribe and family who could not hunt well or did not hunt because they weren’t physically able to. The success of the hunter produced not only healthy food and clothing, tools, medicine, and amenities, but a direct hot-blooded connection with God and the natural world. The hunter was the provider, and exalted as such.

I often think that in the world we live in today, where we are threatened by forces as violent and primitive as anything we have ever faced, that it would be wise to look back a little ourselves and embrace our heritage. We were once a nation of hunters. And not the effete, European-style hunters who did it for sport. We hunted for our food, our independence. It’s what made us who we are. But, like so many other virtues that made us unique, we have, as a society, forgotten where we came from and how we got here. What was once both noble and essential has become perverted and indefensible .

Here’s what I know:

Those who disparage me are ignorant.

Those who damage me will pay.

And:

A human head is pretty heavy.

THE TELECONFERENCE with Governor Spencer Rulon was scheduled for 7 P.M. in the conference room in the county building in Saddlestring. Joe sat waiting for it to begin at a long table with his back to the wall. In front of him on the table were three manila files brought by Randy Pope, a spread of topo maps, and, in a plastic evidence bag, the single red poker chip he had found in the grass near the body. The poker chip had been dusted for prints. None were found. Sheriff McLanahan had ordered food in from the Burg-O-Pardner-burgers, fries, coffee, cookies-and the room smelled of hot grease and dry-erase markers. Joe’s cheeseburger sat untouched on a white foam plate.

“You gonna eat that?” Kiner asked.

Joe shook his head.

“You mind?”

“Not at all.”

“I can’t believe I’m hungry,” Kiner mumbled as he unwrapped Joe’s cheeseburger.

Joe shrugged. He had had no appetite since that morning and could not get the image of Frank Urman’s hanging body out of his mind. The photo spread of the crime scene tacked on a bulletin board didn’t help.

McLanahan and his deputies occupied the other end of the table, digging into the box of food like hyenas over a fresh kill. On the wall opposite Joe were three television monitors and two stationary cameras. The county technician fiddled with a control board out of view of the cameras and whispered to his counterpart in the governor’s office in Cheyenne.

Robey Hersig, the county attorney and Joe’s friend, read over the crime-scene report prepared by the sheriff. At one point he gulped, looked up, said, “Man oh man,” before reading on. It was good to see Robey again, but Joe wished the circumstances were different, wished they were on Joe or Robey’s drift boat fly-fishing for trout on the Twelve Sleep River.

“Five minutes before airtime, gentlemen,” the technician said.

Director Randy Pope paced the room, head down, hands clasped behind his back. Pope was tall and thin with light blue eyes and sandy hair and a pallor that came from working indoors in an office. He had a slight brown mustache and a weak chin and his lips were pinched together so tightly they looked like twin bands of white cord.

“Pope is making me nervous,” Kiner whispered between bites. “I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“Me either,” Joe said.

“He’s not just passing through either,” Kiner said. “He got a room at the Holiday Inn. He’ll be here awhile.”